The Problems With The
UK
's New Religious Hate Law

British Home Secretary David Blunkett is about to
make a very serious mistake. With his support, a law against incitement
to religious hatred is currently making its way through the British
Parliament. It proposes to make it a criminal offence (punishable by up
to seven years imprisonment) for anyone to stir up hatred against
religion. Blunkett, predictably, trots out the usual platitudes about
using the law to attack 'extremism', but it seems clear the legislation
is actually a sop to British Muslims who feel alienated from the ruling
Labour party over the war in
Iraq
. Traditionally, Blunkett's party has attracted virtually the whole of
the
UK
's Muslim vote, and so it is not surprising the new bill contains the
very protections they have been demanding since the Salman Rushdie
affair back in 1989.

The complaint from Muslims, then as now, is that
while Jews are protected under racial hate laws, and Christians by a
blasphemy law, Islam enjoys no special legal status. True enough,
though, in the case of Christianity, this is likely because no one has
bothered to have this anachronistic law removed from the statue books.
In any event, it has only been used once in living memory, and that in a
private prosecution more than thirty years ago.For Muslims to complain they haven't recourse to a law that
Christians themselves see as laughably outdated is disingenuous to say
the least.

Betting, rightly, that it would be difficult to
sell an extension of the blasphemy law to the British public, Blunkett
has opted to play on the (justified) contempt people feel for racism
instead. The legislation, he tells us, will be used to plug loopholes in
existing laws that have allowed racists to attack Islam as a way of
stirring up ill-feeling against ethnic groups.

While this does happen, it is quite beside the
point. We should legislate against racist speech, yes, but not against
any kind of speech whatever that may be used by racists to further their
agenda. Right now in the
UK
, there is a problem with gun crime among the black population -- Would
it make sense to pass a law prohibiting criticism of armed robbery if
racists began to use this as a reason to attack blacks?

The point being ignored, of course, is that there
is a striking difference between race and religion in that one is a
morally-neutral fact about a person, the other a set of opinions often
charged with moral-judgements of all kinds. It is dangerous to blur this
distinction -- between biology and beliefs -- not least because it
erodes the special status we reserve for racism. The laws against racial
hate exist because it is obviously unfair to make judgements about a
person based on their skin colour -- Considering the attitude of many
Islamists to Jews and non-Muslims, Blunkett is actually coming
perilously close to throwing a protective cloak around the very kind of
bigotry he purports to be trying to silence.

There are serious questions that need to be asked
about Muslims in the West. Just a few days ago came news that this year
alone the British Consulate in
Pakistan
has rescued almost 100 young British men and (mainly) women from forced
marriages in that country. Honour killings are also being recognised as
a major problem, and the
UK
police are currently investigating more than 300 mysterious deaths among
Muslim women in the
UK
. Add to this the fact that many Muslim areas of
France
are virtual no-go areas for native French, and that there are more
native Dutch leaving
Holland
because of fear of Muslims than foreigners entering the country, and it
seems as though there is every reason for British people to be able to
ask questions about the failure of Muslims to integrate into Western
society.

Yet, a week ago, David Blunkett gave some
indication as to the scope of his new law by saying it would criminalize
such remarks as 'Muslims are a threat to
Britain
'. This statement was telling, since it is hard to see how such a
comment could realistically be taken as 'inciting hatred'. No, it seems
clearer and clearer that the purpose of this new legislation is to
stifle not only direct criticism of Islam as violent, backward and
harmful to women, but also more general questions about the failure of
the multiculturalist approach to integrate Muslim populations in
Europe
.

As the cracks in this policy widen, Blunkett is
desperately attempting to paper over them; to say, in effect, that the
official line of cultural harmony with Islam must be protected from all
criticism and dissent.

There will be two consequences if this bill becomes
law:

First, it will be much rarer to find anyone brave
enough to offer any critical commentary at all on British Muslims.
Already, journalists and politicians are careful of running foul of race
hate laws -- little mention was made of the mobs of Muslim youths who
celebrated in the streets of Bradford,
Yorkshire
on 9/11, and rioters in that city two years ago were uniformly described
in the media as 'Asian'. This is technically true, but members of the
UK
's large Hindu population were involved in neither of these incidents,
and so it already seems as though there is a reluctance to target
Muslims, specifically, for the problems they cause. Blunkett's new law
will encourage this kind of squeamishness, and offer yet another
disincentive to anyone who considers mentioning Islam in a negative
context. Journalists will learn to censor themselves even more harshly
than they do at present; 'Muslims' will always be 'Asians', and cultures
will never be said to clash, even as they are obviously doing just that.

The second consequence of the new law is even more
disturbing. So far, all involved in this debate are assuming the
situation as stands will not deteriorate further. But this year we have
seen graphic evidence of how horribly untrue this is. In
Spain
, the tide of a democratic election was turned by bombs on commuter
trains, while in
Holland
, there was the brutal murder of Theo van Gogh. That both these events
are directly linked to Muslims and their religious beliefs is
unquestionably true, and it is doubtful that even David Blunkett's
proposals could completely divest references to Islam from a debate
about a similar atrocity in
Britain
. What they would certainly do, however, is change the shape of such a
debate, ensuring that each and every reference to Islam was skewed in
favour of our adopting the attitude of tolerance and appeasement
favoured by Blunkett and the left. In essence, the British government is
attempting to place so many obstacles in the way of those who wish to
speak out against Islam that it will be virtually impossible for anyone
to do so. Maybe this will earn the Labour Party back some of the Muslim
votes they have lost, but the price is a heavy one. The West is at war
with Islam, and in war, it is unwise to create legal barriers against
the criticism of one's enemies.